Technicoloured Memories
by Muffytaj
Summary: New nightmares replace old ones, and to Sasuke these are more terrible than any that came before. Team 7 fic, including Kakashi.


**Technicolor Memories**

If you had asked Sasuke what he thought he would dream of in the Hidden Sound Village, he would have told you "Anything but this." He had thought he would dream of revenge, his brother, blood, betrayal, the nightmare of existence. He would have told you that his own personal demons would, _should_ haunt him to the end of his limited days.

But instead he dreamt of them.

It was night and he was walking away again. He saw once more the slow swivel of feet in front of him, relived strands of pink hair sticking to a slightly sweating face. From so many times before he knew what was inside of her: fear, despair, hope and resolution bundled up under taunt skin. He could taste the quiver of her lips, feel the ringing in her ears, and hear the thudding of her heart.

He moved. One step, two steps, spoken words, following the same path he had tread so often since then.

The sharp tang of spilt tears filled the space between them.

"Why...?" She asked, and that was almost enough. Such a simple question, the start of a nightly routine, and already he could remember the smell the blood he was to let.

Only he couldn't, because that day/night he hadn't really smelt anything. He hadn't truly heard the undercurrents in her voice, hadn't let himself feel the pain of Naruto's blows, hadn't, in fact, allowed very much at all to reach through his resolution.

But now… now everything played back before him in painful technicolour. Every tremor in the face he held his back to, every hitch in his comrade's racing breath, every nuance in his teacher's emotionless speech… now there was no escape from them. He could not block them, and no counter-attack landed.

Sakura was always first, and a flicker of her distraught face last. Kakashi came next, his light voice puncturing Sasuke's bravado. In the middle was Naruto, the dramatic chase with its bloody climax, a life-changing decision made on the spur of a moment, and just as quickly changed again.

In his dreams he met once more the three people he had been closest to, and the three he had come closest to killing.

Naruto would have been easy. Instead of deflecting at the last moment, and then walking away, a sharp blade could have ended the conflict. Split-second decisions, but those were the ones that matter.

Kakashi would have been more difficult. The man was slippery, but he also held a belief in Sasuke's humanity. If Sasuke had played along better, he could have been close enough to slip death through his imperfect teacher's ribs.

Sakura would have been laughable. If he had attacked from front on, rather than from behind, if he had moved immediately rather than waiting and struggling with himself for so long, if he had pushed harder with his fingers or drawn his blade at any point or had, in fact, gone about his confrontation with her with any semblance of sense, she too could have been buried with the others.

But it would also have been hardest with Sakura, because there was no violent build-up, no adrenaline pumping through his veins. It was almost as if she had been deliberately trying not to threaten him, right up until the last moment when she had lost her head and screamed. The whole scene had been one of muted agony, unspeakable loss. But then sometimes emotion, Sakura's speciality, is more powerful than the strongest killing blow.

Kakashi had been carefully calming as well, but Sasuke had had his own rage to build up upon. And Naruto, well, Naruto wouldn't know how to calm a drugged sloth.

But he had not struck out, and had walked away from them all. To himself he said that his demons were overpowering, that what had passed had already determined his future. And in doing so, he had unleashed in those three their own demons. And that, perhaps, was what brought him back here, night after night. At those three moments he could have changed it all, one way or another. Three chances to save himself, or deeper damn himself.

And oh how he had wanted to! To tell his teacher how much and how little he thought of him, for shouldering his memories and continuing on. For living and not letting others feel the burden of his past, for opening his heart to three small children who could so easily break it again. But also for hiding himself, masking his face and truth behind cloth and book. For letting them blunder down their paths, and using such minimal efforts to save them. For revealing his similarities to Sasuke's past, but showing himself to be so much stronger than Sasuke. He hated Kakashi's smile, for saying such words so lightly.

How he had wanted to tell Naruto to stop thinking so well of everyone! To wrench open his chest and pour into it his own hate, distrust, his broken belief. To make Naruto realise, and truly understand, the depths to which humanity will sink. To force him to see that not everyone who becomes a monster is one because of others, that some are monsters because they _are_, with no easy excuses or pretty speeches. To mould Naruto into himself, to obliterate forever his carefree smile. He hated Naruto's faith in others, and how he could continue to believe.

Sakura also he wanted to ruin. He had wanted to take her and break her, to stop her from wearing her heart so openly, from loving beyond the point of safety. He had wanted to grab her and dig in and take and take and make her see that she shouldn't accept his darkness, to stop her from ever loving and trusting again, and forever burn his madness into her. He hated her for loving him, and for all that could have been.

The three that had never harmed him, he shattered, and thought he would walk away free.

So, against all he expected, it was them he dreamt of every night, breaking forever the tradition of his self-absorbed personal nightmares. Sakura's heart-ripping feelings, Kakashi and his tormented words, and Naruto with his blinding hope. For once, too late, he put aside his own hatreds, and to others' suffering opened his mind. His lost comrades' demons that he himself had evoked he allowed, if only for a few hours, to prey upon him.

And to him they were more painful than any that had come before.


End file.
